One short period of glory there was in seventy years of gloom—the realized vision of a Roman, Cola di Rienzi, a youth of the people, who, steeped in the writings of classical times, hoped to bring back to the city the freedom and greatness of republican days. From contemporary accounts Rienzi had a wonderful personality, striking looks, and an eloquence that rarely failed to move those who heard him. At Avignon, as a Roman envoy, he gained papal consent to some measures earnestly desired at Rome, and this success won him a large and enthusiastic following amongst the citizens, who applauded all that he said, and offered to uphold his ambitions with their swords.

The first step to the greatness of Rome was obviously to restore order to her streets, and Rienzi therefore determined to overthrow the nobles, who with their retainers were always brawling, and above all the proud family of Colonna, one of whom without any provocation had killed his younger brother in a fit of rage.

The revolution took place in May 1347, when, with the Papal Vicar standing at his side, and banners representing liberty, justice, and peace floating above his head, Rienzi proclaimed a new constitution to the populace, and invested himself as chief magistrate with the title of ‘Tribune, Illustrious Redeemer of the Holy Roman Republic’.

At first there was laughter amongst the Roman nobles when they heard of this proclamation. ‘If the fool provokes me further,’ exclaimed Stephen Colonna, the head of that powerful clan, ‘I will throw him from the Capitol’; but his contempt was turned to dismay when he heard that a citizen army was guarding the bridges, and confining the aristocratic families to their houses. In the end Stephen fled to his country estates, while the younger members of his household came to terms with the Tribune, and swore allegiance to the new Republic.

Rienzi was now triumphant, and his letters to all the rulers of Europe announced that Rome had found peace and law, while he exhorted the other cities of Italy to throw off the yoke of tyrants and join a ‘national brotherhood’.

It would seem that Rienzi alone of his contemporaries saw a vision of a united Italy; but unfortunately the common sense and balance that are necessary to secure the practical realization of a visionary’s dreams were lacking. The Tribune was undoubtedly great, but not great enough to stand success. The child of peasants, he began to boast that he was really a son of the Emperor Henry VII, and the pageantry that he had first employed to dazzle the Romans grew more and more elaborate as he himself became ensnared by a false sense of his own dignity. Clad in a toga of white silk edged with a golden fringe, he would ride through the streets on a white horse, amid a cavalcade of horsemen splendidly equipped. In order to celebrate his accession to power he instituted a festival, where, amid scenes of lavish pomp, he was knighted in the Lateran with a golden girdle and spurs, after bathing in the porphyry font in which tradition declared that Constantine had been cleansed from leprosy.

The people, as is the way with crowds, clapped their hands and shouted while the trumpets blew, and they scrambled for the gold Rienzi’s servants threw broadcast; but long afterwards, when they had forgotten the even-handed justice their Tribune had secured them, they remembered his foolish extravagance and display, and resented the taxes that he found it necessary to impose in order to maintain his government and state.

The history of Rienzi’s later years is a tale of brilliant opportunities, created in the first place by his genius, and then lost by his timidity or lack of balance. On one occasion, when he learned that the very nobles who had sworn on oath to uphold his constitution were plotting its overthrow, he invited the leaders of the conspiracy to a banquet, arrested them, and sent them under guard to prison. The next morning the prison-bell tolled, and the nobles within were led out apparently to the death their treachery had richly deserved. At the last moment, however, when each had given up hope, the Tribune came before the scaffold, and, after a sermon on the forgiveness of sins, ordered those who were condemned to be set free.

If he had wished to win their allegiance by this act of clemency Rienzi had ill-judged his enemies. They had disliked him before as a peasant upstart; now they hated him far more bitterly as a man who had been able to humble them in the public gaze, believing, whether rightly or wrongly, that it was not forgiveness but fear of the powerful families to which they belonged that had finally moved him to mercy. From this moment the Orsini, the Colonna, and their friends had but one object in life—to pull the Tribune from his throne. By bribery and the spreading of false rumours they set themselves to undermine his influence, telling tales everywhere of his extravagance and luxury as contrasted with the heavy taxes, until at last in 1354 a tumult broke out in the city, and a mob collected that stormed the palace where Rienzi lodged, shouting ‘Death to the Traitor!’ As the Tribune attempted to escape he was seen against the flames of his burning walls and cut down.

With the fall of Rienzi died the idea of a restored and reformed Italy through the medium of a Holy Roman Republic, just as Dante’s hope of a new and more perfect Roman Empire had been shattered by the death of Henry VII. Was there then no hope for Italy in mediaeval minds? The next answer that there was hope, indeed, came from Siena, one of the hill towns not far south of Florence, and its author was a peasant girl, Catherine Benincasa, who, like Jeanne d’Arc, looking round upon the misery of her country, believed that she was called by God to show her fellow countrymen the way of salvation.

St. Catherine, for she was afterwards canonized, was one of the twenty-five children of a Sienese dyer, who was at first very angry that his daughter refused to marry and instead joined the Order of Dominican Tertiaries—that is, of women who, still remaining in their own homes, bound themselves by vows to obey a religious rule.

In time, not only the dyer but all Siena came to realize that Catherine possessed a mind and spirit far above ordinary standards, so that, while in her simplicity she would accept the meanest household tasks, she had yet so great an understanding of the larger issues of life that she could read the cause of each man or woman’s trouble who came to her, and suggest the remedy they needed to give them fresh courage or hope.

During an outbreak of plague in Siena it was Catherine who, undismayed and tireless, went everywhere amongst the sick and dying, infusing new heart into the weary doctors and energy into patients succumbing helplessly to the disease.

When one of the wild young nobles of the town was condemned to death according to the harsh law of the day for having dared to criticize his government, Catherine visited him in prison. She found him raging up and down his cell like some trapped wild animal, refusing all comfort; but her presence and sympathy brought him so great a sense of peace and even of thanksgiving that he went to the scaffold at last joyfully, we are told, calling it ‘the holy place of justice’. Here, not shrinking from the scene of death itself, Catherine awaited him, kneeling before the block, and received his head in her lap when it was severed from his body. ‘When he was at rest,’ she wrote afterwards, showing what the strain had been, ‘my soul also rested in peace and quiet.’

St. Catherine was not alarmed when ambassadors from other cities, and even messengers from the Pope at Avignon, came to ask her advice on thorny problems. She believed that she was a messenger of God, ‘servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ’, as she styled herself in her letters, and that God intended the regeneration of Italy to be brought about neither by Emperor, nor by a Holy Roman Republic, but by the Pope himself. No longer must he live at Avignon, but return to Rome, and, once established there, begin the work of reform so sorely needed both by Church and State. Then would follow a call to the world that, recognizing by his just and generous acts that he was indeed the ‘Father of Christendom’, would joyfully come to offer its allegiance.

This high ideal touched the hearts and imaginations of even the least spiritual of Catherine’s contemporaries. One of her letters was addressed to that firebrand Sir John Hawkwood, whom she besought to turn his sword away from Italy against the Turks; and it is said that on reading it he took an oath that if other captains would go on a crusade he would do so also.

St. Catherine herself went to Avignon and saw Pope Gregory XI—a timid man, who loved luxury and peace of mind, fearing greatly the turbulence of Rome. At this time all the barons of the Campagna and most of the cities on the papal estates were up in arms, and Gregory had been warned that unless he went in person to pacify the combatants he was likely to lose all his temporal possessions. Catherine, when consulted, told him sternly that he should certainly return to Italy, but not for this reason.

‘Open the eyes of your intelligence,’ she said, ‘and look steadily at this matter. You will then see, Holy Father, that ... it is more needful for you to win back souls than to reconquer your earthly possessions.’

In January 1377 St. Catherine gained her most signal triumph, for Gregory XI, at her persuasion, appeared in Rome and took up his quarters there, so bringing to an end the ‘Babylonish Captivity’. Not long afterwards he died; and the Romans who had rejoiced at his coming were overwhelmed with fear that his successor might be a Frenchman and return to Avignon. ‘Give us a Roman!’ they howled, surging round the palace where the College of Cardinals, or Consistory, as it was called, was holding the election; and the cardinals, believing that they would be torn in pieces unless they at least chose an Italian, hastily elected a Neapolitan, the Archbishop of Bari, who took the name of Urban VI.

It was an unfortunate choice. Urban honestly wished to reform the Church, but of Christian charity, without which good deeds are of no avail, he possessed nothing. Arrogant, passionate, and fierce in his frequent hatreds, blind to either tact or moderation, he tried to force the cardinals by threats and insults into surrendering their riches and pomp. ‘I tell you in truth,’ exclaimed one of them, when he had listened to the Pope’s first fiery denunciations, ‘you have not treated the Cardinals to-day with the respect they received from your predecessors. If you diminish our honour we shall diminish yours.’

Rome was soon aflame with the plots of the rebellious college, whose members finally withdrew from the city, declared that they had been intimidated in their choice by the mob, that the election of Urban was therefore invalid, and that they intended to appoint some one else. As a result of this new conclave there appeared a rival Pope, Clement VII, who after a short civil war fled from Italy and took up his residence at Avignon.

The period that followed is called the Great Schism, one of the times of deepest humiliation into which the papal power ever descended. From Rome and Avignon two sets of bulls, claiming divine sanction and the necessity of human obedience, went forth to Christendom, their authors each declaring himself the one lawful successor of St. Peter, and Father of the Holy Catholic Church.

With Clement VII sided France, her ally Scotland, Spain, and Naples; with Urban VI, Germany, England, and most of the northern kingdoms; and when these Popes died the cardinals they had elected perpetuated the schism by choosing fresh rivals to rend the unity of the Church. Thus in the struggle for temporal supremacy reform was forgotten, and the growing spirit of doubt and scepticism given a fair field in which to sow her seed.

St. Catherine had realized her desire, the return of the Pope to Rome, only, we see, to find it fail in achieving the purpose for which she had prayed and planned. The Popes of the fourteenth century were men of the age in which they lived, not great souls like the saint of Siena herself, who called them to a task of which they were spiritually incapable. With her death her ideal faded, and another gradually took shape in the minds of men, namely, ‘an appeal from the Vicar of Christ on earth to Christ Himself, residing in the whole body of the Church’.

Christendom remembered that in the early days of her history it had been Councils of the Fathers, sitting at Nicea and elsewhere, that had defined the Faith and made laws for the Catholic Church. Now it was suggested that once more a large world-council should be called from every Catholic nation, composed of Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, the Heads of the Friars and of the Monastic and Military Orders, together with Doctors of Theology and Law. This council was to be given power by the whole of Christendom to end the schism, condemn heresy, and reform the Church.

The person who was chiefly responsible for the summoning of this council, that met at Constance in 1414, was Sigismund, King of the Romans, a son of the Emperor Charles IV, and brother and heir to the Emperor Wenzel, a drunken sot, who was also King of Bohemia, but quite incapable of playing an intelligent part in public affairs. Sigismund was King of Hungary by election and through his marriage with a daughter of Louis the Great47; but his subjects had little respect for his ability, and were usually in a state of chronic rebellion. In spite of the fact that he had no money and had been decisively and ingloriously defeated in battle by the Turks, he continued to hold high ambitions, desiring above all things to appear as the arbiter of European destinies who would reform both Church and State.

The Council of Constance gave him his opportunity, and certainly no other man worked as hard to make it a success. Sometimes he presided in person at the meetings, which dragged out their weary discussions for about four years: at other times he would visit the courts of Europe, trying to persuade rival Popes to resign, or, if they were obstinate, civil sovereigns to refuse them patronage and protection. He even tried, though in vain, to act as mediator in the Hundred Years’ War, in order that the political quarrels of French and English might not bring friction to the council board.

It is unfortunate for Sigismund’s memory that his share in the Council of Constance was marred by treachery. As heir to the throne of Bohemia and the incapable Wenzel he was often led to interfere in the affairs of that kingdom, and felt it his duty to take some steps with regard to the spread of Wycliffe’s doctrines amongst his future subjects, especially in the national University of Prague. Here heretical views were daily expounded by a clever priest and teacher, John Huss. Now the orthodox Catholics in the university were mainly Germans, and hated by the ordinary Bohemians, who were Slavs, and these therefore admired and followed Huss for national as well as from religious convictions.

Sigismund agreed with Huss in desiring a drastic reform of the Church, suitable means for ensuring which he hoped to see devised at Constance. At the same time he trusted that the representatives of Christendom would come to some kind of a compromise with the Bohemian teacher on his religious views, and persuade him by their arguments to withdraw some of his most unorthodox opinions. With this end in view he therefore invited Huss to appear at the Council, offering him a safe-conduct.

Many of the Bohemians suspected treachery and shook their heads when their national hero insisted that he was bound in honour to make profession of his faith when summoned. ‘God be with you!’ exclaimed one, ‘for I fear greatly that you will never return to us.’ This prophecy was fulfilled; for Huss, when he arrived at Constance, found that Sigismund was absent, and the attitude of the Council definitely hostile to anything he might say. After a prolonged examination he was called upon to recant his errors, and, refusing to yield, was condemned to death as a heretic; Sigismund, on his return to Constance shortly after this sentence had been passed, was persuaded that unless he consented to withdraw his safe-conduct the whole gathering would break up in wrath.

Herod, he was told, had made a bad oath in agreeing to fulfil the wish of Herodias’s daughter and should have refused her demand for the head of John the Baptist. To pledge faith to a heretic was equally wrong, for as an example and warning to Christendom all heretics should be burned. It was imperative therefore for the good of the Church that such a safe-conduct should be withdrawn. Sigismund at last sullenly yielded, conscious of the stain on his honour, yet still more fearful lest the council he had called together with so great an effort should melt away, its tasks unfulfilled, as his many enemies hoped.

In July 1415 Huss was burned alive, crying aloud with steadfast courage as those about him urged him to recant, ‘Lo! I am prepared to die in that truth of the Gospel which I taught and wrote.’ Lest he should be revered as a martyr, the ashes of Huss were flung into the river, his very clothes destroyed; but measures that had prevailed when an Arnold of Brescia preached to a few, some two centuries before, were unavailing when a John Huss died for the faith of a nation. Sigismund kept his council together, but he paid for his broken word in the flame of hatred that his accession in 1419 aroused in Bohemia, and which lasted during the seventeen years of what are usually called the Hussite Wars.

The Council of Constance had condemned heresy: it succeeded in deposing three rival popes, and by its united choice of a new pope, Martin V, it put an end to the long schism that had divided the Church. The question of reform, the most vital of all the problems discussed, resulted in such controversy that men grew weary, and it was postponed for settlement to another council that the new pope pledged himself to call in five years.

Such were the practical results of the first real attempt of the Church to solve the problems of mediaeval times, not by the decision of one man, whether pope or emperor, but by the voice of Christendom at large. If the attempt failed the difficulties in the way were so great that failure was inevitable.

The Conciliar Movement was modern in the sense that it was an appeal to the judgement of the many rather than of a single autocrat; but it proved too mediaeval in actual construction and working for the growing spirit of nationality that brought its prejudices and misunderstandings to the council hall. English and French, Germans and Bohemians, Italians and men from beyond the Alps, were too mutually suspicious, too assured of the righteousness of their own outlook, to be able to sacrifice their individual, or still more their national, convictions to traditional authority. The day for world-rule, as mediaeval statesmen understood the term, had passed; and the Council of Constance was a witness to its passing.

Supplementary Dates. For Chronological Summary, see pp. 368–73.